In January of 2009, it was announced that director McG, hot off of his work on the not-so-well-received Termination Salvation, would be taking on a new adaptation of Jules Verne‘s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea for Disney. Ten months later, the project had been killed off.

Now it looks like Disney has found their replacement, and it is quite the step up on the directorial chain. The studio is set to name David Fincher the new captain of this underwater adventure. Fincher is best known for his psychological crime thriller Se7en, as well as Fight Club, Zodiac, and his recent multi-Academy Award nominee, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

Not much was known of the new Captain Nemo: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea movie that was well on its way to us, but one might imagine that Disney had plans of bringing another massive water-filled adventure much like their Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. They had gotten so far as to hire Terminator Salvation director McG to helm the flick, and names like Will Smith were rumored for the role of Captain Nemo. None of this matters anymore now, as Disney has slammed the brakes on with force and stopped all forward progress on the project.

The movie was set to tell an origins tale of the fabled Captain Nemo and the building of his ship, the Nautilus. It was actually on the fast track at one point, but it appears that the controversial firing of popular chairman Dick Cook may have knocked it off its course for the time being. The original 1954 film starred Kirk Douglas and it was Disney’s very first live-action film production.

Just when you thought that Fox couldn’t enrage you any more than they already have, it has now been announced that Chuck producer Scott Rosenbaum is developing a new show for the television studio that will supposedly be an “epic Western with a sci-fi twist” about a gunslinger who is caught between two worlds. Rosenbaum will be producing the show with Warner Brothers TV and Terminator Salvation director McG‘s Wonderland Sound and Vision studio. No title or further details are known as of this moment.

The big catch in all of this, is that it sounds an awful lot like the basic premise for another former Fox title that just so happens to have a massive cult following of fans dying for its revival: Joss Whedon’s Firefly. Granted, the whole “stuck between worlds” bit sounds like it won’t be identical to Firefly, but it is still enough to scratch your head, and for some, maybe even become more angry.

Around the time that Terminator Salvation was making its massive final push toward what ended up being a bit of a let down at the domestic box office, director McG and his movie were in the news what seemed like every single day. Whether it was a new image, a quote, or any other variety of things, it was all over the ‘net.

While out helping to promote the new TV show Human Target, McG got back to it, starting with what went wrong with Salvation, as well as some details on what could become Terminator 5.

Terminator Salvation
Directed by McG
Starring Christian Bale, Anton Yelchin, Sam Worthington, Bryce Dallas Howard, Moon Bloodgood, Common
Rated PG-13
Release date: May 21, 2009

The future is not set. There is no fate but what we make for ourselves.

Being a big fan of the Terminator film series ever since I was in elementary school I always took those words to heart. Time is always in a state of flux and the most minor action could set forth a series of events that could impact future events greatly or simply peter out. The message was that we are all in complete control of our individual destinies and the possibilities are endless. The Terminator movies were not the kind most parents would usually allow their children to watch but my mom did not really care. Her and I, we had a trust. The concepts of time travel and how the slightest mistake in the past can have large scale consequences in the future have been explored in popular fiction for more than a century by authors such as H.G. Wells and Ray Bradbury. The Terminator movies took these concepts and melded them with moral and philosophical ideals and hard-driving action under an umbrella of eternal darkness and storms of fire and rain. They made a movie star out of a Hitler-admiring bodybuilder from Austria, gave a prolific directing career to a former truck driver and Roger Corman protégé from Canada, and raised the bar for cinematic science fiction. Even the unnecessary third entry, Rise of the Machines, had its moments.